ABSTRACT
As designers, efficient material use to achieve a certain design is a well-established principle that is evolving to be centered around the whole building decarbonization. From early design to construction to operation and end of life, calculating the embodied carbon of building structures based on a bill of materials helps to quantify the impact of design decisions and build a database of design-specific carbon values that can be used to improve a design and to benchmark across different building types and structural systems. Ultimately, decarbonization will require the specification of low-carbon material technologies and the establishment of material- or product-specific global warming potential (GWP) limits, used to better qualify the embodied carbon of a specific design.
Quantifying embodied carbon takes different forms at the various stages of design, with all tools sharing a central repository of industry-wide carbon factors. As the industry works toward carbon reduction, designs can specify project-specific low-carbon materials, which will refine the calculation to include product-specific carbon factors. Alternatively, for some building materials, accounting for and reducing the use of carbon-intensive ingredients, in addition to collaboration with industry partners early in design to create and select materials based on performance and project goals, will drive decarbonization over the next few decades.
Attendees will learn about the calculation of embodied carbon of building designs, the use of material specifications to realize project-specific design goals and the feedback loop from carbon quantification and specification efforts to future building design.
